On Expression

Here's a post that's been languishing for months in the purgatory that is my drafts folder. Thought it was high time I published.....

This will not be another post on an "Open Letter to a Dehli Boy". Countless arguments and rebuttals, some more eloquent and thoughtful than others, have already been exhausted on the subject, judging by the viral nature of the article in question on Twitter, Facebook etc. My purpose in this post is to explore the nature of the responsibility we as bloggers have in exercising our right to publish our views, uncensored, on a very public platform. While I cannot condone the devisive and violently hostile tone of "Open Letter," let me be the first to admit that I understand the author's misguided attempt to vent some very obvious pent-up frustration.

When I first started blogging, I envisioned the blogosphere as a sort of virtual pen pal world, a platform for me to send out my anonymous message in a bottle and receive some affirmation back, that I was not the only one in this world to be thinking these thoughts, feeling this way. From all the comment threads of the numerous blogs I religiously read, I really saw blogging as an engine to meet like-minded people, each of us struggling and encouraging one another to keep at our craft, feeling the power of our words finally reaching an audience. There was a relief in the anonymity and the lack of face to face contact, making it so much easier to say the things that should be said but are often too delicate to say in person.

In the end, it seems that this very anonymity, with its concurrent lack of accountability, is the very pitfall of blogging as a platform for expression. When does honesty traverse the boundary into intolerance, racism and bigotry?

My own struggles with blogging do not answer such lofty questions, but they do bring up other issues that have been weighing on my mind. In generating content for this blog I realize that my style has often been wavering and indecisive, one post hardly ever related to the other. Although at some point, I seriously considered making this spot a venue for my fiction, the common denominator I seem to have settled on instead is my own life. I realized early on in my writing career that if you cannot be honest about yourself, laying yourself out uncensored on the page, vulnerable to criticism, you cannot expect to write convincingly about another. Personally, I believe this is why the fiction of most budding writers is so juvenile; the stories can be nothing other than contrived when the author has not breathed his life blood into his creation, the pages themselves a reflection of his own soul.

Which brings me back to my current dilemma, one faced by countless bloggers before my time and one sure to plague those who will come for years after. Where do we draw the line for what we make public on the internet? Some of the posts I have written are incredibly raw, literally demons wrested from my subconscious from some darker time in my life, spewed violently out on the internet for everyone to witness the depths of my vulnerability. Though everything I wrote is an earnest depiction of what I was feeling at that time and I have absolutely no regrets on what I have published to date, as with every other human being, my views on the issues may have changed with the healing hand of time.

Is it just that I am still judged on a remark I made years earlier, etched indelibly in html as perpetual evidence of my guilt? Is it right that people exploit my candor, assuming that they know everything about me on the basis of a few posts about my life, selected admittedly with a deliberately editorial hand and often stylistically embellished to appeal to my audience? Am I compelled to edit my thoughts for fear of this judgement, or worse yet should I sacrifice my art on the altar of acceptance? I did do this for a time on this blog, a dark time when blinded by the allure of page views and adoring comments, I succumbed to the pressure to sacrifice my artistic integrity, choosing breezy topics sure to earn a few laughs over the thoughts I truly felt the urge to pen.

My answer to the queries voiced above is an emphatic NO!!!!! across the board. I think I have finally gathered the courage to say that I will continue to pen my thoughts, uncensored and sans apology. After all, there will always be things that need to be said but go on unheard because we are too afraid to say them. I hope by my example that I can encourage others to lift up their voices and shout with pride, albeit with tolerance and respect for the views of others.